Tag Archives: Story

Yesterday I finished writing Costume Shop, which I’ve been working on for a couple years. It’s a Halloween story, so I always worked on it in the fall. I’d write a few paragraphs then Halloween would be over and I’d move on to something else.

This year I had the beautiful art done by my daughter to spur me on. I really wanted to get it done, and out, so that everyone could see it. So I finally finished it.

Which brings us to the next part; editing. And I only have one more day to do that before we get in a car for a week long journey to LA, and twitchcon.

I’ve already done a bunch of editing, so it’s only a matter of going back over it once or twice and cleaning it up, but still…. I have to actually do it.

If I manage it Costume Shop will be available this weekend. It is an RL Stein style chapter book for younger readers. I might even do a few more in this style…. We will see.

For now I am mostly packed for twitchcon. Gregg has a few finishing touches to do tomorrow, and then we start driving. Well I start driving. I’m sure he’ll take the wheel after a much needed nap.

My answer: What is the value? What value do they hold higher than that? They will make a choice.

Example, they value life and think guns are bad. But they value their life and their child’s life more. So when a masked guy breaks into their home and somehow the main character gets a gun in their hand they have a choice…. Die and hold the value that guns are evil, or use it against the bad guy.

We make choices like this all the time. Sometimes it’s as simple as “don’t hurt bugs” until the creepy spider shows up in your bathtub. Sometimes it’s something bigger. There is always the question of what is more important to them.

I have many scars on my body. After 40 years of life it isn’t unusual. I have a scar from a motorcycle burn when I wore shorts and didn’t pay attention to where I was putting my leg. I have a thin scar on a knuckle from where I cut myself as a child. I have a big dent in my forehead from chickenpox, and a scar on my elbow from running into a door frame.

But there are two scars that are unusual. One; a large scar on the back of my hand that is sharp at the tip, and blunt at the bottom. The perfect shape of a knife blade. Two; a cigarette burn on my neck.

When I was fifteen I had to ride the bus to school. It was an hour long bus trip each way with a lot of kids, most of which really didn’t care about me. We lived far from town because land was cheaper out there, and there were no cops to but into anyone’s business. And many of the families took advantage of that. Not all of them, mind you, but there were a few.

Not long before summer we were on our way home. The day was hot, and all the windows were down letting in a constant blast of wind and noise. I was sitting with my hand on the seat in front of me, leaning forward to see something.

I did not notice the boy behind me lean over the back of my seat, I just felt my hand erupt into searing pain. I screamed, yanking my hand away, and saw him jerk a knife back over the seat.

On the back of my hand was a burn the exact same of a knife tip. The skin had been burned away. Third degree burns, and I still carry the scar. I suspect he was lighting the tip with a lighter. It didn’t really matter. My hand was already damaged.

Worse, I didn’t say a thing. The bus driver assumed it was just normal teenage shenanigans, and I didn’t want to get someone else in trouble so I didn’t say anything. It took me a long time to learn to stand up for myself.

My hand healed, but it’s a reminder to me. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Don’t sit back and just let people hurt you if you have a way of fighting back. One of the more painful lessons I’ve had.

I’m not writing enough. I’m writing more than I did before this month, but not enough.

“Enough” is purely subjective, of course, but I feel like I’ve been wasting more time then I should have been. Watching youtube, playing games, reading… okay reading I need to do because that feeds my creativity, but the rest? Maybe not so much. Youtube, especially, distracts me from writing. I’ve had to cut back to just listening to music while writing. But it’s so tempting to just click that button and go see what else is out there!

Monday is only a couple days away and I’ll be going back to a regular job. It kind of disappoints me, which is crazy because at first I was all scared about not having a job for a month. Now I almost feel like I let myself down. Here I was with this perfect opportunity to prove to myself I was self motivated enough to write full time, and I didn’t.

Well, I wrote, and I wrote a lot more then usual, but I didn’t write enough for my taste. And I have no excuses, no one to blame except for myself. There might have been a couple of days where other things took priority, but the vast majority were days that I could have written double, or triple what I did.

So, looking back on that, I wrote double what I had planned to write tonight. I’m still going to bed earlier than usual because… well… I start work in a couple days. But I do feel more accomplished today than I have in a week. And I’ve got another chapter close to finished.

I also worked on getting the print version of Witch’s Curse and Witch’s Stand up…and then realized I had messed up a few things in the last version so I have to edit them, and redo it. Thankfully it was just little things, like putting “kindle edition” instead of “print edition” in the copyright notice, and a miss spelling in the authors note. Small things, but they annoy me anyway.

On the plus side, I got the cover fixed, and at the correct dimensions. Now on to Witch’s Stand.

A while ago I started working on a short story called Zombie Swarm. I even came up with a cover that I really liked.

So why isn’t it out? Because as much as I liked the concept and several of the scenes of that story, it just wasn’t good enough.

The biggest problem was easy to fix. I added a few more characters. The whole situation wasn’t very convincing or suspenseful enough so it ended up falling a little flat. Most of the story takes place inside of once little lab, but with only two people working in a lab you don’t have a lot to work with. I added three more people and suddenly things started coming together. There were more issues between characters, more problems, and more strife. Then the creature they are dealing with, I didn’t have to change it much, but I did have to add a few more scenes to the original plot, and a lot more detail.

So it meant going back, completely reworking the original plot line, and rewriting it. I threw away the 6000 words I’d already written to start all over again. But I know I’m going to have a better story because I did that, even if it really REALLY sucked throwing away 6k words that I wrote. I’m also expecting the finished story to be twice as long, at least, so that’s a plus.

So today I did my Vlog about frustrations of finishing, and publishing, SOMETHING. Anything. Well, especially my trilogy that I’ve been working on for all of 2014.

Well, it’s 2015, and I guess I needed a break. My boyfriend gave me a little pep talk (Crissy, you need to write, stop making excuses.) and I sat down to do so. But I couldn’t face my trilogy again. Not after all that time spent on it. So I switched to another project, the one that I was actually going to work on once this trilogy was finished. And what do you know, in 15 minutes I’d already written 500 words.

Sometimes you need to take a break. Sometimes you need to mope for a few minutes and get your frustrations out. And sometimes you just need to shelf the project for a little while and work on something else. So that’s what I’m doing. Mermaid’s Curse won’t be shelved forever, but it will probably be a week or two before I get back to it. A month at most. Till then I have to work on something. So I’m working on Eternal Tapestry book 1. (You know, the book that comes before Forgotten Ones. Can I never write anything in order?)

(BTW, I finished with 750 for the night since it’s already midnight and I have work tomorrow. But that’s way better then zero.)

Also, my boyfriend Gregg and I started doing a new project. We’re calling it Nano-Files, and it is us telling some crazy stories using a deck of cards. You can check out it out here. You can also catch up on my semi daily vlog here.